Saturday, December 15, 2012

Horrors.

Pain in our own lives does not make us immune to it in others' lives. Just as joy in our lives shouldn't either.

We are aware. We are confused. We are saddened. Even as we are here in California to prepare for a second memorial service for our own loved one, still, we are all of those things. Just as the heart makes room to love many people, it also makes room for us keep our joy, pain, sunshine and rain all at once. The heart is an amazing thing.

Mental illness sucks. So does grief magnified by an image of fear. Fear in the eyes of the person you lost and love. Man. I am recognizing right now that, despite our own pain, that it's surely exponentially worse to have to contend with extra things like that, too.

See this?Now this is just so fucked up that there's nothing more to even say on it. And yes. It deserved that f-bomb because that's exactly what it is.

This is when faith is hard. Yes, I still have mine. I do. But the part that makes this all hurt even more is that someone who was holding onto theirs by a tiny thread might officially let go now. That sucks, too.

And no. I'm not trying to open up a complicated faith discussion over this so please don't mistake it for that. It's just what's on my mind and what I am pushing around in my own head.

You know, I realize that when you speak of "faith" you are speaking of faith in your God, religious faith. And you know I don't have that one. Don't. Just do not.But I am aware that I do have faith. Faith in a lot of things. One of them being that most humans are kind and good. This horrible tragedy does nothing to alter that belief. In fact, the very horror that it invoked is proof of that. I'll keep my faith, you keep yours. This is the way it should be.

It does suck. Thinking about the pain these families and this community is experiencing, from the youngest to oldest, the students to the rescue personnel. Sigh. Thinking of many Grandmas, like yours, there to keep an eye on their babies as they bury their babies. It's so hard. Trying to figure out how to live life without feeling guilty that so many people, including your family, are suffering. I still have my faith, but you know, faith doesn't take out the gut punch that all of this stuff can deliver.

I do understand the need to have discussions of mental illness, I really do, but I wish it didn't come in this way because I'm afraid it increases the stigma. I have a "mental illness." I also have a degree in Psychology and Criminal Justice. I am a mother, a wife, a daughter, and a friend. I'm a volunteer. I love to cook, the beach is my happy place, and I have set a goal to run my first half marathon in 2013. I know I'm rambling, but things like this put a microscope on a problem that needs understanding, not more judgment and it concerns me.

Welcome to Atlanta.

"Becoming is better than being." - Carol Dweck

Who me? I'm just glad to be here.

Honestly? I write this blog to share the human aspects of medicine + teaching + work/life balance with others and myself -- and to honor the public hospital and her patients--but never at the expense of patient privacy or dignity.
Thanks for stopping by! :)

What's the point?

"One writes out of one thing only--one's own experience. Everything depends of how relentlessly one forces from this experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give."

~ James Baldwin (1924 - 1987)

"Do it for the story." ~ Antoinette Nguyen, MD, MPH

Details, names, time frames, etc. are always changed to protect anonymity. This may or may not be an amalgamation of true,quasi-true, or completely fictional events. But the lessons? They are always real and never, ever fictional. Got that?